It’s that time of year when mom and dad look for ways to improve their child’s academic standing during the upcoming scholastic year or, at least, they should be.

There are many options to weigh in such as: new school clothes, school supplies, peer pressure, after school care, homework, league sports, and transportation.

This is time of year for great changes, but here are two changes that will impact your child for life and require a bit of work and commitment on your part.

Expose your child or children to some kind of faith: The faith of your parents, your faith, your spouse’s faith, or the faith that you left behind. Set an example and start attending a temple, mosque, shrine, or church right now.

If your children have nothing to believe in, will they have a happy, productive, and successful life? You already know the answer to the question, and it requires work to teach children. Anybody can let years go by, and teach their children nothing.

Find a hobby that suits your child and have them stick to it. Oh no, more work! Yes, it is, but your child will benefit immensely from this decision.

It could be dance, Yoga, martial arts, music, gymnastics, boy scouts, girl scouts, or something else, but whatever it is, your child should initially like it. At that point have them make a commitment and don’t allow them to quit unless there is a solid reason.

If a coach, teacher, or tutor is abusive, that’s an understandable reason to leave, but you can always find another coach. In truth, if you allow laziness, in your child, you will receive it. Children will usually follow the path of least resistance, but they crave structure.

My experience has been: Children constantly turn their attitudes around, for the better, in martial arts and Yoga classes. Due to the fact, that there is a formal set of existing rules and a code of conduct.

Don’t allow them to sit in a corner with a video game and a television, except for rare occasions. There are too many good things going on in the “real world” that need their attention.

These two changes will instill fortitude, perseverance, and goal-setting skills that last a lifetime. The rewards can be endless, for your whole family.

As with most holidays, school will use Grandparents Day as a special activity for the class. This can be especially true of preschool, where there is as much focus on social activity and every day life as there is on learning the functionalities of reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, with so many different holidays to plan activities and crafts for, you may be out of ideas for Grandparents Day. Have no fear; there is always something new and different to try.

If your preschool has a high level of parental involvement, you may have your preschoolers create family trees. While these don’t have to be long and detailed, they can trace the immediate family and the grandparents. It can also be made creative, actually drawing a tree with branches that reach to each family member.

You can also have your students create Grandparents Day “gift bags”. Make the bag as much a part of the gift as what it contains by having your students color paper lunch bags. Then, fill it with a hand-crafted greeting card for the holiday and perhaps things like a colored picture or a couple of pieces of candy.

One fun idea, if you have the time and patience, is to have the children put on a show. They could act out a scene depicting children showing respect and thanks to the elderly or even sing to their grandparents. Having these respected members of society visit the classroom could be a very special event and could make the elderly feel useful. At the same time, perhaps the children’s grandparents could visit and tell stories from their youth, read books, or even just answer questions about the “olden days”.

With signed permission slips, you may plan a field trip to a nursing home, where the children can greet the lonely elderly and wish them a happy Grandparents Day at a time when there is no one else to bring such a pleasant message to their lives.

Or, you could simply plan an arts and crafts activity that will create a cute gift for the childrens’ grandparents on this special holiday.

Personality traits are enduring, usually rigid patterns of behavior, thinking (cognition), and emoting expressed in a variety of circumstances and situations and throughout one’s life (typically from early adolescence onward). Some personality traits are harmful to both oneself and to others. These are the dysfunctional traits. Often they cause discomfort and the person bearing these traits is unhappy and self-critical. This is called ego-dystony. At other times, even the most pernicious personality traits are happily endorsed and even flaunted by the patient. This is called “ego-syntony”.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes 12 ideal “prototypes” of personality disorders. It provides lists of seven to nine personality traits per each disorder. These are called “diagnostic criteria”. Whenever five of these criteria are met, a qualified mental health diagnostician can safely diagnose the existence of a personality disorder.

But important caveats apply.

No two people are alike. Even subjects suffering from the same personality disorder can be worlds apart as far as their backgrounds, actual conduct, inner world, character, social interactions, and temperament go.

Diagnosing the existence of a personality trait (applying the diagnostic criteria) is an art, not a science. Evaluating someone’s conduct, appraising the patient’s cognitive and emotional landscape, and attributing motivation to him or her, is a matter of judgment. There is no calibrated scientific instrument that can provide us with an objective reading of whether one lacks empathy, is unscrupulous, is sexualizing situations and people, or is clinging and needy.

Regrettably, the process is inevitably tainted by value judgments as well. Mental health practitioners are only human (well, OK, some of them are…:o)). They hail from specific social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They do their best to neutralize their personal bias and prejudices but their efforts often fail. Many critics charge that certain personality disorders are “culture-bound”. They reflect our contemporary sensitivities and values rather than invariable psychological entities and constructs.

Thus, someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder is supposed to disrespect social rules and regard himself as a free agent. He lacks conscience and is often a criminal. This means that non-conformists, dissenters, and dissidents can be pathologized and labeled “antisocial”. Indeed, authoritarian regimes often incarcerate their opponents in mental asylums based on such dubious “diagnoses”. Moreover, crime is a career choice. Granted, it is a harmful and unpalatable one. But since when is one’s choice of vocation a mental health problem?

If you believe in telepathy and UFOs and have bizarre rituals, mannerisms, and speech patterns, you may be diagnosed with the Schizotypal Personality Disorder. If you shun others and are a loner, you may be a Schizoid. And the list goes on.

To avoid these pitfalls, the DSM came up with a multi-axial model of personality evaluation.

We all find it hard when starting a new language, and one of the trickiest things can be pronunciation. What we will do is give you a quick run through of the rules and how they apply them to Spanish words

Welcome to Spanish for beginners, a pronunciation guide, the first thing we are are going to look at is the Spanish Alphabet.

a b c ch d e f g h i j k l ll m n ń o p q r s t u vx y z

Firstly we can see that there is on w, but we do have three new letters that are not in the English alphabet, ch, ll and ń. Lets start with the vowels.

Spanish For Beginners - Pronunciation - The Vowels

Unlike English vowels, Spanish vowels only have one sound.

a is said as in cat, not as in say.

e is said as in beg.

i is said as in feet, not as in sit.

o is said as in not, not as in note.

u is the exception, it has two options! it is said as in cool, unless it is between a g and an i, or a g and an e, then it is silent, even then if it has two dots over it

The pace of change is accelerating. In today’s vernacular, the paradigm shift is happening twice as fast. Technology of today, will be obsolete shortly. In the case of information technology, in less than one year, progress is doubling.

Information technology covers more than computers, software and electronics. Researchers are making vast strides in health care issues, medicine and drugs. They are discovering how drugs work and actually the reason why they work.

Scientists are now working on the human genome. This is our genetic code. Imagine, they are discovering what makes the cells of the body work as they do The genome projected was completed three years ago that is why we can move so much faster now. The amount of genetic data we can decode is doubling every ten months. The price of decoding a gene base pair is declining to less than a penny today. This is dramatic since the cost in 1990 was $10.00 a pair.

It took our researchers fifteen years to sequence the HIV virus. They sequenced the SARS virus in one month and now are capable of sequencing a virus in just a few days. We can now develop models on major diseases. Image being able to reprogram the body to not accept cancer, heart and many other debilitating diseases.

My mind is telling me that is the future of my youth. When baby boomers were young, man went to the moon and technology especially space technology became a paradigm shift. Now the shift has changed and the future is here. Where do you think the future shifts will occur?

“I am actually not a man of science at all. . . . I am nothing but a conquistador by temperament, an adventurer.”

(Sigmund Freud, letter to Fleiss, 1900)

“If you bring forth that which is in you, that which you bring forth will be your salvation”.

(The Gospel of Thomas)

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we cannot get elsewhere.”

(Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion”)

Harold Bloom called Freud “The central imagination of our age”. That psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory in the strict, rigorous sense of the word has long been established. Yet, most criticisms of Freud’s work (by the likes of Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, Havelock Ellis, Malcolm Macmillan, and Frederick Crews) pertain to his - long-debunked - scientific pretensions.

Today it is widely accepted that psychoanalysis - though some of its tenets are testable and, indeed, have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated - is a system of ideas. It is a cultural construct, and a (suggested) deconstruction of the human mind. Despite aspirations to the contrary, psychoanalysis is not - and never has been - a value-neutral physics or dynamics of the psyche.

Freud also stands accused of generalizing his own perversions and of reinterpreting his patients’ accounts of their memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious . The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy has been castigated as a crude form of brainwashing within cult-like settings.

Feminists criticize Freud for casting women in the role of “defective” (naturally castrated and inferior) men. Scholars of culture expose the Victorian and middle-class roots of his theories about suppressed sexuality. Historians deride and decry his stifling authoritarianism and frequent and expedient conceptual reversals.

Freud himself would have attributed many of these diatribes to the defense mechanisms of his critics. Projection, resistance, and displacement do seem to be playing a prominent role. Psychologists are taunted by the lack of rigor of their profession, by its literary and artistic qualities, by the dearth of empirical support for its assertions and fundaments, by the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, by the derision of “proper” scientists in the “hard” disciplines, and by the limitations imposed by their experimental subjects (humans). These are precisely the shortcomings that they attribute to psychoanalysis.

Indeed, psychological narratives - psychoanalysis first and foremost - are not “scientific theories” by any stretch of this much-bandied label. They are also unlikely to ever become ones. Instead - like myths, religions, and ideologies - they are organizing principles.

Psychological “theories” do not explain the world. At best, they describe reality and give it “true”, emotionally-resonant, heuristic and hermeneutic meaning. They are less concerned with predictive feats than with “healing” - the restoration of harmony among people and inside them.

Therapies - the practical applications of psychological “theories” - are more concerned with function, order, form, and ritual than with essence and replicable performance. The interaction between patient and therapist is a microcosm of society, an encapsulation and reification of all other forms of social intercourse. Granted, it is more structured and relies on a body of knowledge gleaned from millions of similar encounters. Still, the therapeutic process is nothing more than an insightful and informed dialog whose usefulness is well-attested to.

Both psychological and scientific theories are creatures of their times, children of the civilizations and societies in which they were conceived, context-dependent and culture-bound. As such, their validity and longevity are always suspect. Both hard-edged scientists and thinkers in the “softer” disciplines are influenced by contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations.

The difference between “proper” theories of dynamics and psychodynamic theories is that the former asymptotically aspire to an objective “truth” “out there” - while the latter emerge and emanate from a kernel of inner, introspective, truth that is immediately familiar and is the bedrock of their speculations. Scientific theories - as opposed to psychological “theories” - need, therefore, to be tested, falsified, and modified because their truth is not self-contained.

Still, psychoanalysis was, when elaborated, a Kuhnian paradigm shift. It broke with the past completely and dramatically. It generated an inordinate amount of new, unsolved, problems. It suggested new methodological procedures for gathering empirical evidence (research strategies). It was based on observations (however scant and biased). In other words, it was experimental in nature, not merely theoretical. It provided a framework of reference, a conceptual sphere within which new ideas developed.

That it failed to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and to account for discoveries in neurology does not detract from its importance. Both relativity theories were and, today, string theories are, in exactly the same position in relation to their subject matter, physics.

In 1963, Karl Jaspers made an important distinction between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen. Erklaren is about finding pairs of causes and effects. Verstehen is about grasping connections between events, sometimes intuitively and non-causally. Psychoanalysis is about Verstehen, not about Erklaren. It is a hypothetico-deductive method for gleaning events in a person’s life and generating insights regarding their connection to his current state of mind and functioning.

So, is psychoanalysis a science, pseudo-science, or sui generis?

Psychoanalysis is a field of study, not a theory. It is replete with neologisms and formalism but, like Quantum Mechanics, it has many incompatible interpretations. It is, therefore, equivocal and self-contained (recursive). Psychoanalysis dictates which of its hypotheses are testable and what constitutes its own falsification. In other words, it is a meta-theory: a theory about generating theories in psychology.

Moreover, psychoanalysis the theory is often confused with psychoanalysis the therapy. Conclusively proving that the therapy works does not establish the veridicality, the historicity, or even the usefulness of the conceptual edifice of the theory. Furthermore, therapeutic techniques evolve far more quickly and substantially than the theories that ostensibly yield them. They are self-modifying “moving targets” - not rigid and replicable procedures and rituals.

Another obstacle in trying to establish the scientific value of psychoanalysis is its ambiguity. It is unclear, for instance, what in psychoanalysis qualify as causes - and what as their effects.

Consider the critical construct of the unconscious. Is it the reason for - does it cause - our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Does it provide them with a “ratio” (explanation)? Or are they mere symptoms of inexorable underlying processes? Even these basic questions receive no “dynamic” or “physical” treatment in classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for its pretensions to be a scientific endeavor.

Psychoanalysis is circumstantial and supported by epistemic accounts, starting with the master himself. It appeals to one’s common sense and previous experience. Its statements are of these forms: “given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient - doesn’t it stand to (everyday) reason that A caused X?” or “We know that B causes M, that M is very similar to X, and that B is very similar to A. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that A causes X?”.

In therapy, the patient later confirms these insights by feeling that they are “right” and “correct”, that they are epiphanous and revelatory, that they possess retrodictive and predictive powers, and by reporting his reactions to the therapist-interpreter. This acclamation seals the narrative’s probative value as a basic (not to say primitive) form of explanation which provides a time frame, a coincident pattern, and sets of teleological aims, ideas and values.

Juan Rivera is right that Freud’s claims about infantile life cannot be proven, not even with a Gedankenexperimental movie camera, as Robert Vaelder suggested. It is equally true that the theory’s etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable, as Grunbaum repeatedly says. But these failures miss the point and aim of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive, non-tendentious, and persuasive narrative of human psychological development.

Should such a narrative be testable and falsifiable or else discarded (as the Logical Positivists insist)?

Depends if we wish to treat it as science or as an art form. This is the circularity of the arguments against psychoanalysis. If Freud’s work is considered to be the modern equivalent of myth, religion, or literature - it need not be tested to be considered “true” in the deepest sense of the word. After all, how much of the science of the 19th century has survived to this day anyhow?

Build chest muscles as part of your bodybuilding program, and you will be taking an important step towards both looking and becoming stronger. Chest muscles are such a vital factor for a bodybuilder, in creating the right posture, so here we show you how to build chest muscles for yourself.

Step 1

You don’t necessarily have to do a lot of incredibly complicated exercises to build chest muscles, they can even be built using press ups. Although their effect will be barely noticeable if you are already involved in more advanced resistance training, press ups can help give your muscles definition. Press ups are good for people who are just starting to think about building their bodies. An inclined press up is even better.

Step 2

One general piece of advice that you would do well to heed is to build chest muscles using free weights rather than a weight machine. It is sad to note that free weights are losing popularity in many gyms to the weight machines, but using free weights is still the best bet for the serious bodybuilder. Your muscles benefit from a more comprehensive workout the weight is lifted through several different angles, and more muscles are exercised in this way, leading to a more even development.

Step 3

Treat your muscle groups separately. The muscles in your chest belong to diverse groups, and if you can work each in turn, you will gain better results than average bodybuilders who ignore this factor. The chest has an upper and lower part. Inclined dumbbell flys and inclined barbell presses are effective ways of developing the upper chest, while the lower part responds well to declined barbell bench presses and dips on the parallel bars. The chest is also divided into an inner and outer section. The inner section can be worked with standing cable crossovers, and the outer section with flat bench press and flat dumbbell flys.

Step 4

Lift right up to your limit. By far the most effective way of maximizing the effect of your training time when you build chest muscles is to lift until you simply cannot lift any more. This can be a problem if you don’t take care, and you should ONLY attempt this if you can find someone prepared to spot for you. The other person is then able to grab the bar and stop it doing you any harm, or pinning you down.

Your chest muscles are very noticeable, and one of the first parts of the body that people look at when they know you’re bodybuilding. You now know how to build chest muscles for yourself.

The Problem


In our rapidly moving culture, special education students, diagnosed with ADD or ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are an ever-increasing challenge for teachers. Having taught in some capacity for nearly 40 years and being a parent of an active little boy, I have studied these conditions with immediate personal interest.

Holding Their Attention?


Early in my work with the attentionally challenged, I observed that if the learning activity were engaging enough, many of these students could hold attention for long periods. Special Education students diagnosed with ADD or ADHD often have the ability to attend for long periods working with computers or video games. I wondered, could the problem lie more in the pace of the learning activity?

Give Them What They Need


Subsequently, I began to provide activities in my classroom that had some of the same qualities of the immediate response achieved in those computerized attention-holders. One of the most successful of these was the excavation of fossils.

The Setup


Fossil excavation was a 6-week class - more of a club, really &ndash in which students excavated a real fossil fish from a soft rock matrix. This time the class was made up of many special education students with various learning challenges, especially ADHD. The outcome of the class was remarkable.

Getting Their Interest and Attention


We started with a sort of guessing game involving fossils hidden in velvet bags and moved quickly into individual excavation of the fossils. Within minutes, my work was done; the students worked independently for the remainder of the two-hour class. My hardest work that day was to enforce clean-up-the students simply didn’t’ t want to stop working.

Tools And Supplies


The only tools needed for this activity were small screw drivers-the sort that are available from any hardware store in a set of increasing sizes beginning with an eye-glass tool . I also provided magnifiers of varying types. The most sought after were the dissecting microscopes, which gave the individual the best view of the fragile fossil. However, much of the work could be easily accomplished using the naked eye or a magnifier in a stand, just to leave the hands free.

And Then There Are the Behavioral Challenges

I was presented with a new challenge about halfway into the second class: a behaviorally disruptive student who had been removed from another class. I did what I could to introduce him to our work and bring him up to speed. His initial work was little more than digging a hole through his rock, paying little attention to the fossil it contained.

Success!


Then a wonderful thing happened. Another boy, a challenging special education student who generally had little academic success, began to teach. You see, this boy was enthralled with digging out the fossil and he was having incredible success. He single-handedly took over and my work was done.

Students Give Rave Reviews, Almost


The final endorsement came at the end of our 6-week class. Throughout the period, I had rarely interrupted their work, but I had shown a couple of videos to give the students some additional detail about fossil preservation and excavation, geologic history and so on. At the last class, I asked the students to verbally evaluate the class. When I asked how I could improve the class, all agreed: Only show the videos if we can continue excavating our fossils during it!

This is a true story of success. In this six-week project middle school children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD and receiving special education services enjoyed the same success, if not more than, the other students.

Even the most absorbing tool, the TV, was not high on these students’ list of significant work. As a teacher, I felt I had been given a great gift of learning about how to support these special students. I encourage you to try it!

Have you ever wondered how some people seem to get to grips with a new language very quickly? When learning a new language there is often a key that opens the door more quickly. This article will be that key!

The biggest difference between the English and Spanish languages is that Spanish gives lots of its words a gender, what that means is that the spelling of a word will be affected by what or who that word is referring to. If that sounds a little bit odd and not an easy Spanish lesson at all, let us look at a few examples.

A Spanish word for doctor is medico, medico signifies a male doctor. If you wanted to write about a female doctor you could use the word medica.

If you are reading Spanish and come across medica, you know it is referring to a female doctor, medico a male doctor. A word will end in O if its describing a male and an A for a female, easy!

Gender affects what words are used before the object of the sentence as well, this will become clearer if we use an example. Medico, means male doctor, to say “the male doctor” we could say “el medico”, to say “the female doctor” we could say “la medica”, so “el” is used to say “the” for a male and “la” is used to say “the” for a female.

I hope you still think this is an easy Spanish lesson because there are a couple more thing to consider.

We have seen that “la medica” is “the female” doctor, but the gender rule applies if we want to say “A female doctor”, this we could say using “UNA medica”. So if we want to say “A male doctor” we could use “UN medico”.

Lastly there is one more thing to consider. When we are looking at a group we need to know how gender affects the words used in a sentence to describe that group. In English we say “the doctors” regardless of the gender of the doctors in that group, but it is not that simple in Spanish. More than one female doctor could be called “las medicas”.More than one male doctor could be called “los medicos”.

The complication arises if you have more than one person to talk or write about but the group is made up of men and women, if that is the case you always use the masculine option, so a group of doctors made up of men and women will be “los medicos”, even if there are fifty women and one man!

I hope you found that an easy Spanish lesson and that it will be the start of a larger appreciation of the Spanish language. It is essential when learning Spanish that you apply the correct gender to the words used in your sentences, you wouldn’t to cause any offense?

What is the loop of Creation? How is there something from nothing?

In spite of the fact that it is impossible to prove that anything exists beyond one’s perception since any such proof would involve one’s perception (I observed it, I heard it, I thought about it, I calculated it, and etc.), science deals with a so-called objective reality “out there,” beyond one’s perception professing to describe Nature objectively (as if there was a Nature or reality external to one’s perception). The shocking impact of Matrix was precisely the valid possibility that what we believed to be reality was but our perception; however, this was presented through showing a real reality wherein the perceived reality was a computer simulation. Many who toy with the idea that perhaps, indeed, we are computer simulations, deviate towards questions, such as, who could create such software and what kind of hardware would be needed for such a feat. Although such questions assume that reality is our perception, they also axiomatically presuppose the existence of an objective deterministic world “out there” that nevertheless must be responsible for how we perceive our reality. This is a major mistake emphasizing technology and algorithms instead of trying to discover the nature of reality and the structure of creation. As will be shown in the following, the required paradigm shift from “perception is our reality fixed within an objective world,” to “perception is reality without the need of an objective world ‘out there,’” is provided by a dynamic logical structure. The Holophanic loop logic is responsible for a consistent and complete worldview that not only describes, but also creates whatever can be perceived or experienced.

Stating that it is impossible to prove the existence of anything beyond one’s perception is not saying there is nothing beyond perception, only that if there is anything, then whatever that is, is indefinite. It could be argued that the existence of physical laws, the universal perception that the apple falls to the ground is proof of an objective reality. However, this universal agreement is also our perception. It could be argued that if we cannot decide what to perceive, and everybody perceives the same physical reality, then there must be some lawfulness that dictates how we perceive and therefore, this lawfulness could be external to our perception. However, this lawfulness, as we shall see later on, is the precise lawfulness that creates perception, the process of definition, which is not external to perception (this process creates the perceived and the perceiver, which then gives meaning to this process &ndash a loop &ndash but about that, later). It could be argued, that hitting our knee on the table &ndash whether we believe in the table or not &ndash will hurt. The table is external to our body, but not to our perception. What then is perception? It is relating, a process of definition, defining and thereby rendering meaningful what has been perceived.

What then is this process of definition? It is creating borders within which one’s perception gains meaning. The word “definition” comes from the Latin de finire, meaning, making finite or limited. In Hebrew, definition is HAGDARA (הגדרה), meaning, to border. Any definition necessarily implies what the definition is not, or stated differently, to have meaning, whatever is defined explicitly includes the meaning by implicitly excluding everything else. Consequently, to define means to place the defined object within borders that by default create something beyond the borders of the definition. What is this something beyond the defined? The implicitly excluded everything else, or in other words, the indefinite. The paramount importance of incorporating the indefinite within a consistent logical structure cannot be overemphasized. The indefinite itself is a paradox, and incorporating it within the Holophanic logical structure engenders the loop of Creation where the dynamic structure of paradoxes is both the creative force of existence, and also the proof of the necessity of existence.

To better grasp the impetus of Creation, let’s look at the indefinite and paradoxes. What does “indefinite” mean? Anything as long as it is not specified (not defined); anything that appears both within and beyond the borders of the definition and thereby rendering the border superfluous, which means, no border, no definition. If nevertheless we would attempt to define the notion “indefinite,” then that’s a paradox because if we succeed, then it is defined, which contradicts its meaning &ndash its indefiniteness &ndash and the word “indefinite” means that it cannot be defined. This is an example of a paradox, that in essence means, if it is what it is, then it is not what it is, yet if it is not what it is, then it is what it is. A paradox is a creature that consists of a structure (how it is defined, the dynamic process on its way to stabilization) that contradicts its significance (what it is, the stabilized entity). What characterizes a paradox is the motion between its structure and significance, where the structure implies that its significance contradicts its structure, and vice versa.

Another example of a paradox would be “wholeness.” Wholeness (totality, infinite, boundless) can only be wholeness if we can find a way to define it so that it includes everything and there is nothing beyond it. However, if we define wholeness, then to have meaning, it must be bordered within the walls of the definition, which implies that there is something beyond this border, in which case it is not wholeness. Or in more formal language, wholeness is only wholeness if it is not wholeness, which is an inconsistency. If we are satisfied with that, then we have completed the definition of wholeness. However, if we try to include the beyond created by our earlier definition within the borders of our next attempt at defining wholeness, then we gain a new definition of wholeness, which by the sheer structure of the process of defining creates a new beyond. In this case, the process of defining wholeness will be consistent but incomplete, and wholeness will remain indefinite.

Contemplating the paradox of Creation, the ancient Egyptian myth of Creation springs to mind, the myth of the self-creating god, Amun (or Amon). Amun masturbated and swallowed his semen, after which he spit it out in the form of a ball, thereby impregnating his mother, the sky. And only then, was he born. Thus Amun was his own father. Those pious who discovered the illustrated version of this myth in Karnak covered up the erect phallus of Amun, and with it, this story of Creation was laid into obscurity. The Holophanic model of Creation could regard this Egyptian myth as Amun retromorphously creating himself. I have coined the word retromorphous to mean, defining in retrospect, turning non-being into the potential of whatever the observation is made from, or in other words, creating the past from the present, creating the source from its outcome, which is the basis of complexity in the context of the loop logic. That is, only after Amun was born can he give meaning to his mother, the potential from which he emanated and to the process that created him (as represented by masturbation and incest) whereby he was born. Of course, neither the sky nor the masturbating Amun have meaning until Creation takes place de facto and Amun emerges. I find this an enticing illustration of the basic paradox of existence.

So how can there be something from nothing? What is “nothing?” Nothing is what didn’t turn into the potential of something. If there was something from nothing, then that nothing would have turned into the potential of something, because when we ask, how is there something from nothing, we ask this question from something, when something already exists. If we take a deeper look at “nothing,” we’ll discover that “nothing” is a paradox. Any definition is something, so if we defined “nothing,” then it would become something, which contradicts its essence of being “nothing.” Another way of looking at “nothing” would be by means of it being something that is meaningless. That is, “nothing” could be something that does not relate and that no thing or no one relates to. That is, if there was something totally alone in the universe, then that would be nothing, but it would be meaningless. If such existed, its existence would be external to our perception, and as such, this “nothing” would be indefinite.

We said that the indefinite could be anything, as long as it is not specified (not defined). However, if we nevertheless tried to define “nothing” (the indefinite), what would we get then? Since “nothing” is non-definable, it is transparent as the object of our inquiry. So when we attempt to define it, all we have is what we put into it, which is the process of definition. “Nothing” stayed nothing, we didn’t define it, only made the process of definition explicit. “Nothing” gains meaning when we fail to define it; but having tried, we are left with a bonus, a something, which is our process of defining “nothing.” Creation of something from nothing is not a function of defining something, but a function of attempting to define “nothing.” And then, if that process of definition &ndash which already is an existence &ndash looks back at its origins, if this process of defining investigates into its own genesis, then what does it see? It sees itself. It sees the process of definition &ndash self-reference.

If there is nothing external to perception, then this process of definition is the overall wholeness, the creator of meaning when it can relate to itself. However, to have meaning, the process of definition has to be defined; this definition would be a self-referential quasi-infinite and continuous process of establishing borders that create the indefinite beyond that establishes borders creating the indefinite beyond that establishes borders… which means, wholeness would continuously and forever fail to define itself while succeeding to define something &ndash anything but itself.

Of course, both the totally defined and the totally indefinite are idealized notions that would be inconsistent with the Holophanic loop logic, nor can they be found in nature. The totally indefinite would be the total meaningless nothing, the kind of non-being that cannot be fathomed because if we would think about it, it would already be something. On the other hand, there can be no total definition either. I have used the term uncertainty of sameness to describe the logical impossibility of total definition. A defined entity can be said to have reached sameness &ndash it is the same as itself &ndash which means that it is, it exists as something definite, no matter which parameters defined it. However, no sooner does our object achieve sameness than the uncertainty of sameness raises its ugly head. Could it have been defined differently? Yes, of course. Could it have additional parameters? Yes, of course. Could it have been defined more precisely? Yes, of course. This uncertainty of sameness is the indefinite included in the definition, which is the result of including the tools of definition in the definition. Since ‘a’ can only be defined as ‘a’ with meaning if it implies ‘not-a’ (the indefinite beyond the borders of the definition), and since ‘a’ can only have meaning as ‘a’ because it is different from everything else (the everything else is the indefinite beyond the borders, which actually gives meaning to ‘a’), the meaning of ‘a’ depends on ‘not-a.’

When the meaning of something depends on the indefinite, on what our defined object is not, then this indefinite is necessarily included in the process of definition. This logical implication that perception of meaning is only possible if and only if the indefinite is included within the perception is the reason why the 19th century dream of a consistent and complete axiomatic system with only well defined (explicit) empty signs had to fail (see more about that in my article, The Loop Logic). In spite of the fact that logic is the fundament of algorithms and computer science, it had neither the aspiration nor the ability to be connected to the real world precisely because its propositions were so anemic regarding meaning. In the effort to exclude any hint of the indefinite, logical inference was confined to a binary type of world of true and false and lacking any correlation with life and experiencing. However, including the indefinite in the process of definition not only makes the loop logic the fundament of existence, but determines the necessity of existence. With the birth of Holophany, Heidegger’s question, “Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?” becomes irrelevant. When existence is relations, and relating is the act of perceiving, and perceiving is the process of definition, then existence is the overall lawfulness, the isomorphous lawfulness of the process of definition &ndash the loop of Creation. What is being perceived, what is being stabilized, which significance is brought to the foreground from the amorphous background of the indefinite, depends on the non-linear rules of complex interactions. Thus the loop logic emphasizes the creation of essents rather than their interactions.

Is there a lawfulness responsible for any and every existence? An electron and a dog are very different creatures; so what invisible lawfulness is responsible for the existence of both? What kind of lawfulness would fulfill such demands? The answer is, isomorphism &ndash the same logical inner structure in entirely different representations. Whether an electron, a dog or the weather, each could be a different realization of the same inner logical structure. Creation of anything is the creation of meaning, which is an act of definition. The act of definition attempting to define itself is consciousness. So consciousness, or the soul if you wish, is not some invisible copy of our body carrying our identity, but the lawfulness of Creation expressed as our individual qualitative essence. Of course, it has been endlessly stated that we are God, that we are parts of God, and similar phrases. This is true, but true in the sense that God is the lawfulness that unfolds Creation, and this lawfulness is inherent in all creation including the creatures therein. It could be argued, that a soul, a person is more than mere definitions and intellect. If this logic is the logic of anything and everything, then it should be able to delineate the logical structure of experience as well. Indeed.

Anything that has meaning has to be defined, which places it somewhere on the scale between the continuous and the discrete, between the indefinite and the definite. The indefinite, continuous, infinite tends in the direction of the meaningless, whereas the meaningful is at best imprecise. Experience is the process of attempting to define the indefinite. When we try to capture an experience in a description, we are actually defining our attempt at defining the indefinite. The experience is continuous whereas its description, the definition is discrete. Just as we can never define wholeness, we can never define experience. Any description, any definition, is by nature discrete, whereas the net experience is continuous. So when we have an experience or perception and we become aware of having that experience, then we give it meaning by defining what it is. By doing this we create a discrete replica of the experience, yet the experience remains continuous and non-definable, non-discretizable. Experience is connected to learning. The person encounters something new. How do we know that something is new? Because it is inconsistent with our system. So when we interact with it, we have to integrate it, to assimilate it into our system. If we met something that was not new to the system, then our system would recognize it as part of itself. When that recognition does not occur, the system is interacting with something new. That is the impact. The system adjusts to include the new &ndash that is the change. One’s selfhood is the path of changes following one’s experiences.

Our knowledge of the experience &ndash whatever it might be that we experience &ndash makes it exist for us. We could say, one only experiences when one is aware of experiencing. How do we know that we are aware of experiencing something? By experiencing it, we experience the awareness of experiencing. In this sense, experience and awareness of the experience, experiencing the awareness of the experience, being aware of experiencing the awareness of the experience, etc. is an infinitely continuous chain, which is what defines what experience is (not the interpretation of a specific experience, but experience in its general sense). And that’s the definition of experience: an infinite loop of the process of becoming aware.

When “nothing” is the limit of both the totally indefinite and the totally defined, then that’s like a circle of going from something to nothing to something to nothing, etc. The ‘going’ here means perception. “Nothing” is only a notion that has meaning if it has been perceived, in fact, a paradox. If it really is “nothing,” then it cannot be defined, and hence, it has no meaning. Yet if I relate to it, then it is something. So whenever I relate to “nothing,” whenever I say, Creation of something from nothing, that “nothing” has meaning for me, and hence, it is significance &ndash it is something just like any other something. That is, the structure of “nothing” is the same structure as that of something. Essentially, something from nothing is formation, not Creation, since nothing is also something. Then what is Creation? Creation is rather the creation of nothing from something, because Creation is the process of definition, and when we define, we create the indefinite beyond the definition, which at its limit is nothing, and only then can we have something from nothing… Oh yes, the loop. A true loop is only such if it contains its own source. If nothing can be proven to exist external to perception, then logic must be a loop, and existence is a logical necessity inferred by the loop.

Including the indefinite in the process of definition has far reaching consequences. It means that the tools of the definition are necessarily included in the definition. It means that meaning can only occur when there is both definition and also experience. It means that consciousness (whether it succeeds to define or not) must be part of science or any so-called objective endeavor. It means that any and all perception includes experience. The interaction with the indefinite, the experience, is what gives meaning to the defined. Perception, meaningful definition, can only occur in a highly flexible complex system that can learn and change. That’s the difference between us and an electron, which only has fixed relations, and consequently, limited interactions. An electron always succeeds in defining, or it would be more correct to say, it can only interact with what it succeeds in defining. If it encounters the indefinite, it assumes a state of superposition.

Where is God in the loop of Creation? If we wanted to define God, the totality, we could not define God, because by the act of definition we would create the beyond, what is beyond God, which contradicts God’s totality. Therefore, no definition of God would do justice to God, and every such definition would truncate God’s wholeness. If God is indefinable, then God is indefinite. If God is indefinite, then I create God by the implication of the act of definition &ndash any definition, because every definition creates the beyond, the indefinite beyond the borders of the definition. In that sense, this is consistent with the statement that I create God by my perception (definition). This does not say that I perceive God, but that my perception implies the existence of the indefinite (God). This means that if I perceive a dog, this perception implies the existence of God. If I perceive that I perceive, then that implies the existence of God. If I perceive dust, a table, an idea, whatever, then that implies the existence of God. If I experience, then that implies the existence of God. That’s because any existence implies the existence of God. And that’s because any existence is such if it relates or is related to, if it has meaning, if even partially it has been defined, which means, its mere definition implies the indefinite beyond the borders of the definition, it implies God, the indefinable. So one cannot directly perceive God (perhaps that is why it was stated in the Bible that no one could see God’s face and live = exist &ndash “no man shall see me and live…” &ndash Exodus 33: 20), but only know about God by implication, which means, the implication of the indefinite &ndash God &ndash is what attributes meaning to any existence.

However, “God” does not equal “indefinite,” but the process that implies the existence of the indefinite is what could be said to be God, since that’s the process of Creation. This is the process of Creation that both creates something, existence, and also nothing, the indefinite. This is why this logic is a loop.